The tributes have already begun to appear. Courageous warrior and renowned statesman. In fact, he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of civilians in Jordan and Lebanon. In your account of his blowing up 40 houses in Qibya in 1953, you neglected to mention that the civilians were still in them when he did so. Many of his illustrious deeds were controversial, to say the least.

Jim Ross, Castle Rock

This letter was published in the Jan. 16 edition.

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Most people are neither perfect saint nor perfect sinner, we’re a baffling, irritating mix of both. Mr. Sharon accomplished grand things, and made decisions he can be judged harshly for.
The same is true of very single one of us, only most of us don’t play on the stage Mr. Sharon did.
In the 1967 and 1973 wars, Mr. Sharon had a knack for risky military maneuvers that were often on the edge of disaster, but where he came up smelling like a rose.
I know very little about the 1950s fights between the Israeli army and/or special forces and Palestinian guerrillas. But I bet nasty tactics were employed by both sides.
The Israelis created an independent state in 1948. They have fought to keep that state. Palestinians have fought to destroy it, starve it, bleed it to death, etc., but it’s still there. Maybe it’s time the Israelis and the Palestinians recognized that neither is going away, and to figure out a way to live next to each other.
And, no Robtf, Israel is not some divine tool in the End Times. It’s a human creation, like every single one of the other 200 fractious states on this planet, and because it is human-created, it has facets and history and structure that can be praised or condemned. But such End Times thinking gives some Israeli politicians and military officers the cover they need — regardless of whether they believe the End times theology or not.

ThePyro

Amen to the first two paragraphs. Nelson Mandela was recently touted as both reformist and terrorist. Cesar Chavez was both civil-rights hero and supporter of a brutal dictator. Richard Nixon did horrible things as President, and also signed some of the most important civil right legislation of the modern day. And the list goes on…

This penchant we have for lumping people as totally good or totally bad hurts the chances of moving forward on a lot of topics, with the Isreali/Palestinian peace issue being very high on the list.

peterpi

It’s certainly driving the further polarization of our politics.
Nixon signed a lot of good legislation, but in terms of “some of the most important civil rights legislation”, are you confusing him with LBJ?
Nixon made approaches to the USSR and China, signed some good bills, … and precipitated Watergate, the White House Plumbers, and economic war against Chile to drive out a democratically elected leader, who happened to be a socialist, and replace him with a brutal murderous totalitarian dictatorial thug.
Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, … and dragged us further into Vietnam and tolerated COINTELPRO.
########
Strange about socialist leaders. We tolerate them all over Western Europe, England, Canada, Israel, … and are manic and paranoid about them elsewhere, like Chile, Iran (early 1950s), Guatemala, etc. Are Europeans the only ones fit to determine their own government? Japan is an exception, but Douglas MacArthur created the Japanese constitution, a remarkable document, essentially in his own image, so it would be bad form to overturn their government.

ThePyro

Nixon did his fair share, extending what Johnson was doing. He signed the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, and extended the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s existence and scope when it was in danger of being shut down by unfriendly forces in Congress. He put his name on the Emergency School Act of 1971, which aided desegregation in some respects, and then worked out and implemented the plan that finalized desegregation of schools. He wrote Executive Orders forming the Office of Minority Business Enterprise and directing the Feds to spend more with minority businesses, and those were later made law (under Presidents Ford and Carter, admittedly) and continue today to also include women-owned, Veteran-owned and indigenous-owned businesses. He took the Philadelphia Plan from Johnson’s cabinet and made it an Executive Order, establishing the first directed affirmative action plan in the Federal Government. He created the Office of Consumer Affairs, which worked to break down racist and sexist business and Union practices as much as it did to establish consumer product safety rules.

There are a bunch more in the same vein. In this particular area, where Kennedy was eloquent and LBJ was grandiose, Nixon was quiet and diligent. and did much of the hard work that Kennedy’s vision and LBJ’s reach needed done. He deserves way more credit than he’s given, in my estimation.

peterpi

Thank you for your insight.
He also signed into law the EPA and NOAA and some other agencies.
He sure wasn’t today’s Republican. He wanted government that worked. He’d be called a RINO by today’s standards.

guesswhodrews

It sounds like you want to have the Democrats take credit for him. He’s all yours.

You’re definitely on the ball with that analysis. For all the talk of returning to someone like Reagan or Eisenhower on the right and Clinton or Roosevelt on the left – I never thought I’d find myself saying “Maybe what we really need is a guy/gal like Nixon!”.

primafacie

Barkeep, make mine Goldwater.

ThePyro

*slides a cool glass of AuH2O down the bar*

I’m heading offshift, but your new server is named Daisy. I’d be careful…things tend to blow up around her.

ags4ever

Yet very little of any progressive’s programs (Kennedy’s, LBJ’s, or Nixon’s) actually have worked. We’ve lost the war on poverty, since more people (and a larger percentage of the populace) live at or near the poverty line now than when LBJ began the unconstituitonal war on poverty, that was never authorized by any part of the constitution, and is still not authorized by any part of that document. The EPA is a travesty, and wants to spend excessive amounts of taxpayers’ dollars in return for little or no real improvement in environmental conditions.

Progrressivism is a disease that always destroys the country in which it exists.

guesswhodrews

Nixon was a progressives, but the left never forgave him for exposing the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss.

ThePyro

On your latter issue, I couldn’t agree with you more…and would apply it to the opposite end of the political spectrum, too. The North Koreans freak us out and African fascists get our undies in a bunch, but we’ll grant European leaders a long leash before giving them a jolly-good tongue lashing in the UN.

Robtf777

“Nelson Mandela was recently touted as both reformist and terrorist.
Cesar Chavez was both civil-rights hero and supporter of a brutal
dictator. Richard Nixon did horrible things as President, and also
signed some of the most important civil right legislation of the modern
day. And the list goes on……”
=========
And some will add Edward Snowden to that list…….for what he did to expose what the Obama Administration, The NSA, and President Obama who oversees the Military that oversees the NSA……has done, is doing, and would continue to do…….the President Obama DEFENDS being done…….which is the unapologetic……and unabashed……collection, analyzing, and storing of as much private and assumed-to-be-private ……and out of bounds for simple government monitoring……communications……as possible…….which IS…..EVERYTHING…..they can.

And others will add Obama.to that list…..because of the revelations of Edward Snowden.

Robtf777

“Most people are neither perfect saint nor perfect sinner,….”
=========
Ahhhh……but that ‘s the whole point of Christianity…….and the Christian claim about Jesus’ death and sacrifice on the cross: We Are ALL…..quite “perfect” in our sins.

We may not rise to the “level” of Hitler or Ted Bundy or Timothy McVeigh……or an abortion doctor……or an atheist who encourages small children to not believe in God and to reject God…….but that is only because “we” (you) judge others and compare them to “ourselves” (yourself) on Your Own Personal Scale of “not being perfect sinners”…….when God simply sees…..rejection…..disobedience……sins……wrongdoing……and evil……and doesn’t get into the “human nature” of “nick-picking” as to what sins are worse.

From the Christian view of Christ Himself……we are ALL…..”perfect” sinners.

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